As Banksy Does New York, a documentary about the mysterious British Street
artist airs, we look back at that 2013 New York painting residency, Better
Out Than In

British street artist Banksy is keeping New Yorkers on their toes this October with a surprise "entire show" cropping up on the streets of their city.

The exhibition, of sorts, is called Better Out Than In. Its first installation appeared near Manhattan's Chinatown on Tuesday, October 1, and depicted two boys with a spray can. However, within 24 hours the piece was painted over.

At the same time, locals were waking up to the news that a second piece had been created in Chelsea, on the west side of the island. Painted on a shutter, the October 2 piece mimicked classic New York graffiti style, with the words, "This is my New York Accent". In serif script underneath the artist had stencilled, "...normally I speak like this".

Within hours, however, the second piece had also been vandalised with the graffiti tag of a rival street artist. Local fans, and those who had travelled more than 100 miles to see Banksy's work were disappointed to find his pieces defaced, as the news and photos spread on Twitter. However, Banksy is posting pictures of his new work through an Instagram account called Banksyny, which allows his 26,000 followers to see the work upon completion.

New York art fans are awaiting further installations, with the third appearing on the morning of October 3: a dog urinating against a fire hydrant in Midtown. This was annotated by a stranger shortly after appearing - the dog was given a lead and a tag – but was then restored by a member of the public. On October 4 three further murals appeared in Bushwick and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Over the weekend on October 5 pictures of a New York delivery truck converted into a "mobile garden" were posted on the website.

Banksy's "mobile garden" update on October 5.

On October 6 a video of a supposed "rebel rocket attack" was posted.

"Rebel rocket attack", posted on October 6.

October 7 marked a week of work from Banksy, and a return to his more typical form after a weekend of unusual mixed media installations. Echoing the heart motif used in some of his previous work, an image of a floating heart-shaped balloon covered in plasters appeared on a wall in King Street, Brooklyn.

On October 8 Banksy posted a new piece in Greenpoint, a clever quote saying "I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it. — Plato". Within hours two men removed the doorand moved it into a storage area.

On the 9th day of the residency, a piece was found in Ludlow Street that depicted charging horses wearing night vision goggles, with the side of a car and the truck behind it used as a canvas. Its accompanying audio track, containing sounds of gun fire, seemed to imply that the piece was a comment on modern warfare. This comes amidst criticisms that the day 6 piece, Rebel Rocket Attack, over-simplified the conflict in Syria.

Banksy's day 10 piece depicted a small beaver, seemingly caught in the act of chewing through a street sign. It was found in East New York. As people took to the latest work with hammers only an hour after it was found, debates have begun to arise on social media regarding the reasons why so many of Banksy's works have been quickly defaced by other graffiti artists. It was later reported that a group of men had begun charging $20 for onlookers to take photos of the work.

The "Sirens of the Lambs" (Banksyny.com)

Banksy’s 11th piece marked a return to art installations in vehicles – this time a moving one. His work, entitled “Sirens of the Lambs”, consisted of dozens of stuffed animals, accompanied by recordings of the creatures’ cries, crammed into the back of a slaughterhouse delivery truck, which drove around Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

New Yorkers found a priest waiting for them to repent for their sins inside a concrete block on Saturday 12. The work, found on Cooper St, has since been altered and adopted as the centre of a student protest. Students of the Cooper Union added a white beard to the original work to make it resemble their college's founder, Peter Cooper. Alongside it, they parodied Banksy's earlier work by adding 'Free Cooper: The Musical' on the left hand side, and a stencil of their president, Jamshed Bharucha on the right hand side.

On Sunday 13, an unknown elderly man ran a stall by Central Park selling original, signed canvases by Banksy. A YouTube video posted on Banksy's site showed that much of the work went unsold, and those who did make purchases seemed unaware of the work's true value, often bartering for lower prices. This was seen as a direct riposte to accusations by critics that Banksy has 'sold out'.

Banksy seemed to be laughing at his critics with his piece on October 14, found in Queens. Depicting a man washing away the quote "What we do in life echoes in Eternity", he appeared to be stating his amusement at the speed with which his works have been defaced. On his website, he tackled his critics again, responding to accusations that he uses low brow sources. Conceding that quote from that day's piece was from the film Gladiator, he decided to make use of some of Kelly Rowland's X Factor wisdom with the response, "I'm just going to use that hostility to make me stronger, not weaker."

The work was quickly defaced by a gang who added several different tags, with the phrase 'F*** Banksy' amongst them.

On15 October, a small work depicting a pre 9/11 skyline suggested Banksy was paying tribute to the terrorist attacks in New York. A small flower seemed to signify the explosions caused by the impact of the planes. Commentators debated whether this piece would be defaced in the same way as previous works, or whether other graffiti artists would steer clear out of respect for the sentiment of the piece.

A number of floral tributes were quickly placed around the piece. However, one graffiti artist added the phrase 'inside job' to its right, and a photo went viral of a pug urinating on it.

The following day, Banksy surprised the public again by adding an element of performance art to his work. A large fibreglass statue of Ronald McDonald, complete with a man polishing his shoes, appeared outside a McDonalds in the South Bronx. The accompanying audio guide stated that the piece is "a critique of the heavy labour required to sustain the polished image of a multi-national corporation."

On October 17, the Bristol artist continued in a less controversial manner. His work turned an architectural feature on the outside of a Brooklyn building into an image of a Japanese bridge, complete with women with fans and a bonsai tree. Contrary to the work’s original title on Banksy’s website, the image is located in Williamsburg, rather than Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Banksy’s 18th piece was an outdoor exhibition, under a bridge in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood, where many of the city’s most exclusive galleries are located. A knowing parody of the art world, the ‘exhibition’ features a security guard, bench and audio guide on the artist’s website. The two works on show are collaborations between Banksy and Brazilian street artists Os Gemêos. A reference to the Occupy movement, they depict police in riot gear and cartoon characters, the artists' signature figures.

Banksy's outdoor exhibition in Chelsea. Photo: Banksy

Banksy’s next work marked a return to the video form he had employed earlier in his residency. This time there was no political message, but cryptic provocation. The video begins with a close-up of ants going in and out of a sandy crack in the floor. A series of zoom-outs later, and the sandy crack appears to be a detail of a crudely demarcated female form. Whether this is mere schoolboy puerility or a coded critique of YBA-esque art is anyone’s guess, as there is no accompanying text on Banksy’s website.

The penultimate image of Banksy’s third week was another of the artist’s simple, yet visually playful, works. Located in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, it features a young child seemingly knocking the top off a fire hydrant.

Banksy was in an equally playful mood on the twenty-first day of his residency. His latest work, located in the South Bronx, shows a privileged child spray-painting a message reading, "GHETTO 4 LIFE", onto a wall as his butler looks on. This could be seen as a comment on the insincerity of the majority of graffiti or a critique of many fellow graffiti artists.

Banksy avoided the polemic with his October 22 piece. Entitled ‘Everything but the kitchen Sphynx’, it is a straightforward cinderblock sculpture of the Great Sphynx, which the Briton’s website claims is made to ‘1/36 scale’. Whether Mayor Michael Bloombergwill consider the latest instalment in the street artist’s ongoing exhibition as art is unclear. The Sphinx was removed shortly after by locals who claimed it was placed on their land.

On October 23, Banksy fuelled speculation that the New York police had caught up with his antics with a notice that explained that his piece "had been cancelled due to police activity". However, he returned the next day with a piece called Waiting In Vain in the Hells Kitchen neighbourhood of Manhattan.

On October 25, Banksy's Halloween-themed piece involved a grim reaper and a dodgem car, located near Manhattan's Soho district between dusk and midnight during the course of the weekend. He posted a sign on his website to encourage people to wait until 5pm to see the work.

Banksy went further afield for his 28th piece, to Brooklyn's seaside resort of Coney Island, where he stencilled a robot spraypainting a barcode.

On the 29th October, Banksy removed a landscape painting from a thrift store on 23rd Street and added in a Nazi officer. The painting was then returned to the thrift store and displayed there, entitled 'The banality of the banality of evil'.

The penultimate instalment of Banksy's month-long stay in the Big Apple was entitled, "Bronx Zoo". Located just opposite Yankee stadium in the Bronx, the stencil shows a cheetah – apparently constructed out of other people's tags – sitting on a yellow line. As fans of the Bristolian will know, this is a motif that has been used before, though without the level of finesse on display in the new work.

Located in Queen's, the final piece of the residency was a fittingly witty collection of ballons made to look like what Banksy's website describes as, "the ubiquitous spray-painted bubble lettering". Not only is the work a "homage of sorts", given that this type of graffiti originated in New York City, but it also invites the viewer to question whether the work is genuine art or simply full of hot air.

Keep up with the artist's new pieces with our interactive map, and photo gallery.